Anyone here trying to buy Obamacare?

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The Obamacare Crisis

Health care as a necessity comes only after food, shelter and income security. The mismanagement of the website HealthCare.gov and the cancellation of millions of policies pushes an underlying question out into the open: is the federal government capable of managing the provision of a fundamental service through an extraordinarily complex system?
This system requires coordination of over 288 policy options (an average of eight insurers are competing for business in 36 states), each with three or more levels of coverage, while simultaneously calculating beneficiary income, tax credit eligibility, subsidy levels, deductibles, not to mention protecting applicant privacy, insuring web security, and managing a host of other data points.
A malfunction at any one of these junctures could prove fatal.
In enacting the Affordable Care Act, President Obama and his Democratic supporters in Congress took on the task of creating a set of information technologies that has to interconnect with the I.R.S.; the Departments of Labor, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security; the Social Security Administration; state governments; insurers; employers; hospitals; and practitioners in the private sector...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...

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U.S. general: Let's make Obama resign

A retired Army general is calling for the “forced resignations” of President Obama, other administration officials and the leadership of Congress for the direction they’re taking the nation, his list of grievances including the systematic political purge of hundreds of senior military officers in the U.S. military.
Retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely told WND he is calling for nationwide rallies and protests to demand the resignations and added that a peaceful “civil uprising is still not out of question.”
In his capacity as chairman of the organization Stand Up America, Vallely issued what he termed a “National Call to Action” to force the resignations of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Vallely, formerly the deputy commanding general of Pacific Command, said the current crop of leaders must be forced to resign by the “demand resignation” process, which he explained requires massive grass-roots protests and social networking. As an example, he cited the public and media pressure that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon....

(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...

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Press Release: Dating Website Offers to Fix Obamacare Website

SugarDaddyforMe.com is offering to fix Healthcare.gov for free.
WireService.ca Press Release - 11/20/2013 - "SugarDaddyForMe.com is offering to fix Healthcare.gov for free," says Gautam Sharma, the Founder. "We are the world's largest sugar daddy or millionaire dating website. Our site's team of world class programmers has also created and operates several other large dating websites, and combined they currently manage tens of millions of monthly visitors and have handled that massive traffic volume with more than 99.99% uptime and with complete security of member's date since 2005.

(Excerpt) Read more at wireservice.ca ...

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NBC: Large Employers Cutting Benefits Due to Obamacare’s Looming ‘Cadillac Tax’

Large employers are prepping for 2018′s looming “Cadillac insurance” tax by reducing current benefits and passing costs onto policyholders, Lisa Myers of NBC reports:
For 75 million Americans who get their insurance through large companies, the Affordable Care Act is a mixed bag. Experts tell NBC News the new healthcare law is only slightly increasing premiums next year, but causing some companies with the most generous plans to reduce their employees’ benefits.
Aaron Baker, 36, his wife Billie and their two young children are covered under a generous health insurance plan offered by the private Midwestern university where he’s worked for 10 years. When they opened their benefits notice this year, they were pleased to see their $385 premium is only up by four dollars next year. However, they were shocked to discover that instead of covering the first dollar they spend with no deductible, the Baker’s plan now includes a $1,000 deductible and a $2,500 out of pocket maximum. They also will still have small co-pays for services.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApSaXY2SpaU

(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...

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NBC: Large Employers Cutting Benefits Due to Obamacare’s Looming ‘Cadillac Tax’

Large employers are prepping for 2018′s looming “Cadillac insurance” tax by reducing current benefits and passing costs onto policyholders, Lisa Myers of NBC reports:
For 75 million Americans who get their insurance through large companies, the Affordable Care Act is a mixed bag. Experts tell NBC News the new healthcare law is only slightly increasing premiums next year, but causing some companies with the most generous plans to reduce their employees’ benefits.
Aaron Baker, 36, his wife Billie and their two young children are covered under a generous health insurance plan offered by the private Midwestern university where he’s worked for 10 years. When they opened their benefits notice this year, they were pleased to see their $385 premium is only up by four dollars next year. However, they were shocked to discover that instead of covering the first dollar they spend with no deductible, the Baker’s plan now includes a $1,000 deductible and a $2,500 out of pocket maximum. They also will still have small co-pays for services.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApSaXY2SpaU

(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...

As someone who works in insurance....not necessarily health insurance... how in the hell is this helping anyone? Wasn't the whole point to make health insurance "Affordable" hence the name "Affordable health care act" All this is really doing is making health insurance more expensive and with less coverage for everyone while letting people with pre existing conditions have access to health care. Couldn't the government subsidize or even pay for people with pre existing condition for X amount of years and still require people to get health care through private insurance companies so prices would remain relatively the same and the government wasn't involved. The subsidy could be put in place for X years until the last person born today with a pre-existing condition is dead. Everyone born after this date, their family should have existing coverage so they can not be kicked out after a condition comes around. We are taking an idea most people don't want and going through with it in a way that even people who wanted it think is stupid. Impeach Obama and deport him and everyone else involved in this administration, we would have a better government if someone just selected a random guy on the street and said he was in charge of the county.

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White House: Website won’t be fixed by December 1 (Democrats fear the Senate has been lost)
Hot Air ^ |

Old and busted: Healthcare.gov will be fully operational by November 30th. New hotness: Healthcare.gov will, er, work better than it did by December 1!
Brought to you by the same people who insisted that if you liked your insurance plan, you could keep it:
Obama administration officials said Monday that some visitors to HealthCare.gov will experience outages, slow response times or try-again-later messages in December.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) delivered the message in the latest attempt to downplay expectations for Nov. 30, the administration’s self-imposed deadline for fixing ObamaCare’s federal enrollment site.
CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said errors that persist past this weekend would be “intermittent” and, in line with a promise made by the White House, would not affect the vast majority of the site’s users.
But Bataille acknowledged that some would still experience “periods of suboptimal performance” by the system due to either heavy traffic or technical issues that are still being addressed.
“The system will not work perfectly on Dec. 1, but it will work much better than it did in October,” Bataille said.
Speaking of suboptimal performance …
The comments came after HealthCare.gov experienced an unscheduled outage on Monday for one hour. The CMS had recently touted the site for not randomly crashing. Bataille said the problem was remedied quickly by the site’s tech team.
Let’s recall that the pledge last month was specifically that Healthcare.gov would be “fully functional” by December 1. That date was not an accident. In order to have coverage by January 1, enrollees have to complete their enrollment by mid-December, although the administration is trying to get insurers to wait until December 23rd rather than the 15th as the cutoff. If the web portal still can’t handle the enrollments properly and fully by that time — and the 834s to the insurers seem to still be a big problem in that regard:
Behind the scenes, when an individual selects a plan, the federal system transmits a file, known as an “834,” with all of the relevant information about that individual and his or her plan selection.
These files have been plagued by errors, from spouses and children being mixed up to enrollments being duplicated or inadvertently cancelled. According to HHS, they have “completed fixes for two-thirds of the high-priority bugs that our tech team working with issuers identified as being responsible for the issues with 834 transactions and other issuer priorities.”
But according to an insurance industry source, though the 834 problems are getting better, there is still a long way to go. Insurers still haven’t reached the point where they can feel confident that the data is reliable.
As a result, though they have been able to process some payments from individuals, they’ve only been able to do so on piecemeal basis in cases where they are fully confident in the data, often because it’s been verified by hand.
That’s another problem. If the front end starts working better, the deluge of last-minute enrollments to comply with the individual mandate will flood insurers with bad data, which will be impossible to fix by hand in that level of throughput. Let’s also not forget that the subsidy-payment system doesn’t exist yet, either. This announcement only relates to the consumer experience of Healthcare.gov, not the full functionality. Without the subsidy payments to the insurers, there’s still a large question as to whether those subsidy-qualifying enrollees will actually have coverage on January 1 if insurers don’t get the full premiums in hand by December 31st, a deadline which now looks impossible to meet.
Democrats pinned their hopes of competing in the 2014 midterms on the Obama administration’s ability to deliver on this pledge. Now they’re beginning to realize that they’ve hitched their wagons to a failing star:
For Democrats, the politics of the health care law are creating a death spiral of their own. For the White House to protect its signature initiative, it needs to maintain a Democratic Senate majority past 2015. But to do so, Majority Leader Harry Reid needs to insulate vulnerable battleground-state Democrats, who are all too eager to propose their own fixes to the law that may be politically satisfying, but could undermine the fundamentals of the law.
Race-by-race polling conducted over the last month has painted a grim picture of the difficult environment Senate Democrats are facing next year. In Louisiana, a new state survey showed Landrieu’s approval rating is now underwater; she tallied only 41 percent of the vote against her GOP opposition. In Arkansas, where advertising on the health care law began early, Sen. Mark Pryor’s approval sank to 33 percent, a drop of 18 points since last year. A new Quinnipiac survey showed Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, who looked like a lock for reelection last month, in a dead heat against little-known GOP opponents. Even a Democratic automated poll from Public Policy Polling showed Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina running neck-and-neck against Republican opposition, with her job disapproval spiking over the last two months. These are the types of numbers that wave elections are made of.
The big picture isn’t any better: The president’s approval rating, which historically correlates with his party’s midterm performance, has dipped below 40 percent in several national surveys. Democrats saw their nine-point lead on the generic ballot in the Quinnipiac survey evaporate in a month, and a CNN/ORC poll released today shows Republicans now holding a two-point lead.
“You want to prevent your race from being about Obamacare. If you enable your race to be about Obamacare, you’re making a mistake,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who’s working for Landrieu. “You need to explain what you’re trying to fix, and you better be trying to fix something. If there’s nothing you want to fix, there’s something wrong with you. At this point, it’s hard to defend the benefits, but you can say we’re not going back to the evils of the old system.”
In the old system, 85% of Americans had health insurance, and 87% were satisfied with their health care. Good luck trying to run on the “evils” of that system, especially after getting an up-close-and-personal look at DemocratCare.

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Healthcare website enters critical phase, unclear if fixes are enough (Husseincare 21.2)**SNIP**


In Pennsylvania, Ted Trevorrow described errors that he said show problems deep inside HealthCare.gov.

Trevorrow, who works for a nonprofit group called Resources for Human Development, tried to help a man on Saturday who has created two applications because of technical snafus - one by phone, and one online - and cannot access either of them.

"He ran into some sort of technical glitch, and now it will require the intervention of a programmer," Trevorrow said.

Another client hit an inexplicable wall in the subsidy eligibility process. "The system just stopped and wouldn't go any further," said Trevorrow. "It just plain doesn't work and it needs to be fixed."

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...

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Legalized Prostitutes At Nevada’s Bunny Ranch Back Obamacare

MOUND HOUSE, Nev. (CBS Las Vegas/AP) — President Barack Obama has at least one segment of America behind his health care law: the legalized prostitutes at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch.
The girls who work at the Bunny Ranch tell KRNV-TV that it was nearly impossible for them to get health insurance before because of their profession.
“Having this profession, we aren’t exactly offered group health insurance,” Taylor Lee said. “It’s hard because I do have a pre-existing condition so I really support Obamacare. I’m excited.”(continued)

(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegas.cbslocal.com ...

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No security ever built into Obamacare site: Hacker

It could take a year to secure the risk of "high exposures" of personal information on the federal Obamacare online exchange, a cybersecurity expert told CNBC on Monday. "When you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn't appear to have happened this time," said David Kennedy, a so-called "white hat" hacker who tests online security by breaching websites. He testified on Capitol Hill about the flaws of HealthCare.gov last week.
"It's really hard to go back and fix the security around it because security wasn't built into it," said Kennedy, chief executive of TrustedSec. "We're talking multiple months to over a year to at least address some of the critical-to-high exposures on the website itself."
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw the implementation of the website, the components used to build the site are compliant with standards set by Federal security authorities.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...

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Obama: 'We're not going back'
The Hill ^ |

President Obama declared Tuesday that ObamaCare "is working" and that "we're not going back," as the White House looked to reboot its efforts to sell Americans on the president's signature healthcare law.
Obama said that "poor execution" of the rollout of HealthCare.gov had "clouded" the benefits of the bill, but said he would not allow technical glitches to undermine a program that was providing financial security for many Americans.
"If I've got to fight another three years to make sure this law works, that's what we'll do," Obama said.
"We're not repealing it as long as I'm president," he added. "I want everybody to be clear about that. We'll make it work."
The president, flanked by supporters who had benefited from aspects of the law, vacillated between a defense of his embattled program and a sales pitch intended to highlight some of ObamaCare's benefits for ordinary families.
Obama shared stories of individuals who had been helped by provisions of the law that allowed those under 26 to remain on their parents' health insurance, or receive free preventive care.
Acknowledging that the benefits of the program had "gotten lost a little bit," the president urged attendees to tell their friends and families about the law's success stories.
"It's working better now and it's just going to keep on working better over time," Obama said.
In his remarks, the president shied away from directly addressing more recent critiques of the ObamaCare website, including reports that the portal was continuing to provide insurers with error-riddled enrollment information. Obama did say that as new problems arose, the administration would address them.
"Whatever comes up, we're going to fix it," he said, adding later that the White House had " learned not to make wild promises about how perfectly smooth it's going to be."
The president also chastised critics of the law, saying Republicans "haven't presented an alternative" that would address flaws of the pre-ObamaCare system. He singled out Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), saying the Republican leader "refused to answer" when asked what his alternate proposal was.
"He just repeated 'repeal' over and over and over again," Obama said.
Earlier Tuesday, McConnell said the president's "campaign-style event won’t solve the myriad problems facing consumers under ObamaCare."
“The American people have been learning about the impact ObamaCare will have on individuals and families in the form of higher premiums, disrupted insurance, and lost jobs—more broken promises from the administration. And they’re becoming increasingly aware of the fact ObamaCare is broken beyond repair," McConnell said.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that the president's event was the first of many in a "renewed effort to refocus the public and the public's attention on the benefits of the law."
Carney said that in the coming days, the president and other White House officials would talk about existing benefits under ObamaCare, including insurance plans mandating free preventive care, ending discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, and the curbed growth in healthcare costs.
The White House spokesman said that sales effort would use "a number of different venues," including press events and Internet advertising campaigns.
"This is an opportunity now that the website is functioning effectively for the vast majority of users and we are seeing high volume and high volume being handled effectively by the website and people enrolling that it's an opportune time to talk about, again, the actual benefits that are provided by the law," Carney said.

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Obama Launches New Push To Sell Healthcare Law: ‘We’re Not Going Back’

“We’re not going back,” Obama said, flanked by people who the White House said are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. Obama urged Americans to “refocus on what’s at stake.”
“What’s important for everybody to remember is not only that the law has helped millions of people,” Obama said, “but also that there are millions more that stand to be helped.”
“Do not let the initial problems with the website discourage you,” Obama implored, arguing that enrolling in coverage “will make all the difference".

(Excerpt) Read more at swampland.time.com ...

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Obama Launches New Push To Sell Healthcare Law: ‘We’re Not Going Back’

“We’re not going back,” Obama said, flanked by people who the White House said are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. Obama urged Americans to “refocus on what’s at stake.”
“What’s important for everybody to remember is not only that the law has helped millions of people,” Obama said, “but also that there are millions more that stand to be helped.”
“Do not let the initial problems with the website discourage you,” Obama implored, arguing that enrolling in coverage “will make all the difference".

(Excerpt) Read more at swampland.time.com ...

A million people havent even signed up.

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A million people havent even signed up.

I don't think many people realize that... I want to keep this thread alive through January... that's when it is really going to be interesting. People without health insurance trying to see doctor's that don't know what the hell is going on themselves. I have about half dozen close friends that are doctor's... they have no idea what is going on! What do you think is going to happen in January?

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I don't think many people realize that... I want to keep this thread alive through January... that's when it is really going to be interesting. People without health insurance trying to see doctor's that don't know what the hell is going on themselves. I have about half dozen close friends that are doctor's... they have no idea what is going on! What do you think is going to happen in January?

I don't work in health insurance but i speak to a few people that do.....they have no idea what's going on

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Is the President Dishonest Or Ignorant? (How about both?)
Townhall.com ^ |

In September, White House Spokesmodel Jay Carney was asked about the mounting stories of companies cutting employees and hours to get under the arbitrary magic numbers created for Obamacare’s many mandates. In typical progressive fashion, Carney dismissed reality and substituted his own. “There’s a difference between anecdotes and data,” he said.
He’s right, of course. And he should know … his boss has governed by anecdote, not data, not facts, since he took office.
Putting Obamacare aside for the moment, the most egregious example in the history of the United States of the bluster of anecdotes over reality came in the president’s first year.
After passage of the trillion-dollar taxpayer payoff to Democrat donors knows as the “stimulus,” the economy only worsened. The debt skyrocketed, economic growth flat lined, and unemployment ballooned. After wasting the GDP of many small nations and having nothing to show for it, the president glibly joked, “Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected.”
That’s the kind of “humor” you can only attempt when you spend someone else’s money.
But after taking one-third of the annual US budget and setting it on fire, the White House needed some unit of measure to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Enter “saved or created.”
Until the “saved or created” yardstick was manufactured at the White House’s unicorn dream factory, it had never been used before. Data, to that point, was always factual and quantifiable. No more.
The Obama administration, having nothing to show for the largest single check the government ever wrote, scrapped every unit of measure humans had used to that point and went hypothetical. They created the unprovable “saved or created” measure for jobs. It was genius. Diabolical, a lie and corrupt, but genius.
Not only was it impossible to prove any job had been “saved” by the stimulus, it was impossible to prove they hadn’t. It was a hypothetical abstract about an alternate future that could never be. You can’t argue with that. Well, you could argue with that if we had an honest press that didn’t simply parrot White House talking points, but we don't.
They’d pulled off what may well have been the greatest hoax in the history of statistics – hell, in the history of math. Until Obamacare, that is.
On Tuesday, the White House dusted off the old choir risers, loaded them up with human puppets lined up like trained seals waiting for a fish, and got them to clap on command for Obamacare. Who were these human puppets? Obamacare “success stories” – more accurately known as anecdotes.
In his speech, the president pulled five first names from his heavily filtered mailbag and highlighted them as though they were the norm. They were Monica, Sam, Julia, Justine and Joann (apparently his staff drew heavily from the “J” section of the bag). These five had their sad tales of woe -- true or not because you have only his word on it (the White House won’t release their names or any information about them), and his word has proven to be quite elastic of late – paraded about as though they were proof Obamacare is a success. That’s like the tobacco industry bringing out five 90-year-old life-long smokers and declaring they prove smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
This game of “Victims Of Society Monty” the White House is forcing Americans to play is as transparent a fraud as the street game with cards.
“After just the first month, despite all the problems in the rollout, about half-a-million people across the country are poised to gain health care coverage through marketplaces and Medicaid beginning on January 1st — some for the very first time,” the president said. Good for them. Unfortunately almost 6 million other Americans have lost their health insurance because of the same law – most of them for the “very first time” too. But they don’t count.
The White House wants people to focus on only one side of the scale. Doing that means it’s always in balance. But with the ratio being 500,000 to 6,000,000, the scale clearly is not in balance.
That obvious lie can be explained only by ignorance on behalf of the president – the defense he’s claimed on Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, the NSA scandal, the healthcare.gov website failure – or a lack of concern for the truth or for the people he was elected to serve.
Ignorance has been bliss in this administration, but it doesn’t matter which reason the president uses to justify his lies to himself. “We’re not repealing it as long as I am president,” he said Tuesday. That shows an indifference to the real harm he is doing to millions, and soon to be ten of millions next year in the employer-provided market, on the level of any of history’s most despised tyrants.
Whether the president is dishonest, ignorant or a combination of both, he isn’t interested in reality. He has an agenda, and that agenda will march “forward” no matter how many people it hurts, how much it costs or how high a percentage of Americans oppose it or want it repealed and replaced.
So, it’s no surprise Barack Obama was “too busy” to take a half-hour helicopter flight to mark the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address but was able to fly to California for two days of fundraising and campaigning a week later. Even his handlers didn’t want to face the Herculean task of having to explain how the President could go honor a speech predicated on the concept “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and come home to ignore the peoples’ clear wishes to save them from this unadulterated disaster.
The juxtaposition of Barack Obama’s actions with Abraham Lincoln’s words expose him not as a great statesman and leader, but as a Rhett Butler who simply doesn’t.